Arkansas' attorney general has asked a federal judge to end "race-based restrictions" on student transfers involving the Camden Fairview School District.
The state has broadened its school choice laws in recent years, Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a filing in U.S. District Court, Western District of Arkansas. He wants any "restriction" in Ouachita County to be lifted.
"Camden-Fairview’s transfer restriction denies certain white children the school-choice option that Arkansas grants all other children, white or black, across the State," Griffin wrote in the filing.
The request by the attorney general is the latest development in a decades-long dispute over whether districts should or should not allow Arkansas School Choice Act inter-district student transfers if it would result in the "white flight" of students from their district and put certain school systems in conflict with their federal desegregation plans.
A group of parents in Ouachita County had sued more than 30 years ago, seeking to consolidate the Camden, Fairview and Harmony Grove school districts. That lawsuit ended with a consent decree that consolidated Camden and Fairview school systems. Harmony Grove agreed not to accept transfers by white students without the new Camden Fairview district’s permission.
The issue has been in dispute at the state Department of Education and federal court system off and on since then.
Read Saturday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more details.